Leadership Styles – The Success Defining Leadership Style

Leadership styles are varied. Each leader manages his team according to his personal beliefs and leadership skills acquired from formal or informal training.

Informal leadership training is often acquired through interaction with other leaders in the organisation and through on-the-job experience. This two media are good but not enough because . . .

Interacting with a badly bred leader can develop wrong perspectives in the mind of the student and

Experience can sometimes be a bad teacher especially if the experience is not an encouraging one

Having said that, let's get down to the point. What are the common leadership styles?

1. Dictatorship - In this case, the leader decides everything and does not like to be contradicted. His word is final. And those who oppose him or have a different opinion are fired or shown the way out of the organisation

2. Democracy - In this case, the leader flows with the popular opinion. As with democratic governments, his style of leadership is "leadership by the people for the people". And so, he makes decisions based on what will benefit the people

3. Divide and rule - In this case, the leader tries to gain control over his subordinates by pitching one class against the other.

In an organisation there are levels of leadership and line of reporting. A leader who uses the divide and rule system endeavour to use the subordinates of his direct report against his direct report. That way he retains control of the organisation as everyone gets busy fighting themselves instead of demanding performance from him.

4. Fair and result driven leadership - This style of leadership is based on performance. Objectives are set at the beginning of the year. And employees are appraised based on their performance in relation to the set objectives.

Employees are treated fairly and the organisational's rules and regulations are applied impartially irespective of the individual's position within the organisation.

The above is a preview of prevailing leadership styles. The list is certainly not exhaustive.

Of course, different authors present the styles of leadership differently. In fact, many leadership textbooks don't use the words "dictatorship" and "democracy" when discussing leadership types.

Nevertheless, the point is clear. Now you know the prevailing styles of leadership.

But the question is . . . what style of leadership guarantees success?